Back. OK, he’s 53. But Eric Reed Boucher a.k.a. Jello Biafra showed a bunch of largely puzzled kids at the Boardwalk in Orangevale Wednesday night that, while resembling someone who just finished nine holes at the local muni, he can still get up there and flagellate quasi-political-revolutionary shtick that blew by barriers of credulity thirty years ago, and now seems quaint amidst a landscape of pugnacious thugs like Bill O’Reilly and Nancy Grace.

Purple-haired, mascara-smeared kids — who likely weren’t even born yet when the Dead Kennedys broke up — perhaps were expecting someone a bit more iconoclastic to represent the “DK” patches they proudly sported on the backs of their ripped jean jackets. They gamely attempted to look interested as Jello stopped in between songs to yell about Dianne Feinstein. I asked the guy next to me, “Do you know who Dianne Feinstein is?” He shook his head.

Interestingly, when Biafra and backing band the Melvins (uber-professional bog-rock boilermakers who frankly ought to know better) came on for an encore nobody seemed to want, the guy removed his shirt (!) to reveal a physique which resembled a landslide while launching into a tirade to introduce “Rock & Roll McDonald’s”, which is about how fast food is bad for you and makes money for big corporations. “A BIG MAC HAS 26 GRAMS OF FAT! A QUARTER-POUNDER — 28 GRAMS!!”

I was sure to hit the drive-thru on the way home. I got a #2 combo, large. Apparently they don’t do “Super Size” anymore.

The ’60s popsters who gave us “Doo-Wah-Diddy” somehow morphed into the bloviating outfit responsible for this unrepentant classic rock radio staple.

YES, we KNOW the lyrics are NOT, “…wrapped up like a DOUCHE, another boner inna night”, but . . . well, yeah they are, for god’s sake. Listen to Manfred hork (“horking” is like “yarling”, but more esophageal) the line over and over and OVER again and then seriously try to convince yourself that he’s anything other than wrapped up like a douche, another boner in the night. You can’t.

FUN FACT: The Douche Song was actually written by one Mr. Bruce Springsteen. No, seriously. While obviously too embarrassing for The Boss to have his name closely associated with it, hallmarks of his are there amidst the syllabic pummeling, like decaying boardwalk-carnival imagery — “…the calliope crashed to the ground”. But wordy-within-an-inch-of-your-life was apparently not wordy enough for the brothers Mann, as after the first instrumental break, we hear TWO vocal tracks, singing DIFFERENT lyrics, overdubbed over one another. You’d think, “Jeez, that would sound like a mess — like a colossal recording-engineer screwup or something”, and you’d be right. BUT — unmistakable in the mess is Manfred with his voice torqued up into a higher register, shouting, insistent that whatever is indeed “WRAPPED UP LIKE A DOUCHE! ANOTHER BONER INNA NIIIIGHT!”

The song goes on almost literally forever, except for those times when it stops entirely so that Robert Plant can go, “OOOOOOOOOHHHEEEEEEWWWW.”

No classic rock radio staple better illustrates the axiom that classic rock is neither classic, nor rock, than this monstrosity. FUN FACT: Sometime in the ’90s, rapper Puff Daddy remade the song, which made possible a horrifying appearance on TV’s Saturday Night Live alongside a Mathers-esque Jimmy Page. Diddy’s retread, gobbled up by rap audiences oblivious to the stupefying ubiquity of the original, showcased his mad skizzilllzz as he sampled and looped the Zep instrumental track which already sounded like it was sampled and looped, and then yelled over it.